I agree don't use miracle grow if you want a ORGANIC garden.I do believe Miracle grow has a new product for organic gardeners but I do not know if it is certified by the USDA and if it qualifies under NOP rules and regulations or not.

Jess, I think that is the best article I have seen on that. I had wondered if Miracle Gro damaged soil life or not, I recently applied some to my plants that had a bad nitrogen deficiency (I got and it seemed fish fertilizer wasn't doing the trick... and no rain means no grass so I couldn't apply that either, and the eggshells didn't seem to be working either!

Have you ever tried chicken pooh Pellets? They have a higher nitrogen content than any other animal manure. Thats all I use on my garden. Actually thats a lie as I mulch in the Autumn and again in the Spring with a bagged mixture of horse manure and compost.

Jess I don't know how you chaps over the pond feed your chickens but here in the U.S. we yanks have most commercial chicken feed containing arsenic and thus so does the chicken poop. They feed the arsenic to the chickens for internal pest control. Obviously if you have free ranged chickens or your own small flock you know what you are feeding them so you should be safe.You are right though they do have a high nitrogen content when fresh but as it drys out the nitrogen content reduces quickly.

My garden thrives on the stuff. My soil is awful. Huge lumps of chalk at the front and sandy and silty at the back (imported not by me!) where the terraciong was done. They probably bought the cheapest topsoil they could find. It dries out in seconds. The level drops several inches in a season and turns to concrete. Thats why I have to mulch twice a year. All that was in it when we moved in was a nearly dead tree and a very scraggy lawn. I love chicken pooh!!!

Interesting. Good to know that if I know some free range chickens on an organic farm, I can get ahold of something naturally high in nitrogen!

I don't want to go too far off topic here, but I wish America was more careful with what is in its food, like our European counterparts are. Interesting to note, I recently had tests done and have high levels of arsenic in my bloodstream.

*is not eating any more chicken*

At any rate, I won't use the Blue Goo again. I didn't want to, you can ask my hubby how upset I was that I felt I had to feed the plants something or they would feed me nothing...

What about compost tea? Like if I seeped some grass clippings in water for a few days, would the result be a sort of liquid nitrogen fertilizer?

Grey what plants are you trying to treat? When I know that I will be more able to help you. Nitrogen is readily available from the atmosphere and the soil and the only reasons for there not being enough are leaching, erosion etc. These problems are normally associated with large scale farming not backyard gardening. "Cationic exchange" is the name given to the complex process by which plants obtain nutrients from their environment and it is a problem with this that is causing your nitrogen deficiency. Too much of one nutrient inhibits the availability of another. The nitrogen is there but for some reason your plant(s) are unable to use it. Your soil could be too wet, too dry, too chalky, too acid. Have I bored you enough yet? Just tell me what it is and we can go from there or you will spend your life brewing up grass!

Jess wrote:Grey what plants are you trying to treat? When I know that I will be more able to help you. Nitrogen is readily available from the atmosphere and the soil and the only reasons for there not being enough are leaching, erosion etc. These problems are normally associated with large scale farming not backyard gardening. "Cationic exchange" is the name given to the complex process by which plants obtain nutrients from their environment and it is a problem with this that is causing your nitrogen deficiency. Too much of one nutrient inhibits the availability of another. The nitrogen is there but for some reason your plant(s) are unable to use it. Your soil could be too wet, too dry, too chalky, too acid. Have I bored you enough yet? Just tell me what it is and we can go from there or you will spend your life brewing up grass!

Jess, I sure hope you can help! It's tomatoes, mostly. They are pale (well, before the Gro was put on them) and simply not growing. They are now, likely still due to the chemical fertilizer. I've also got peas in there (slow growth, really funky curled up leaves) and even the sunflowers seem like their growth is retarded. The eggplant were also pale, anytime I've grown eggplant before, it grows slow for a looong time anyway, then it seems to shoot up overnight so I am not sure if it's having issues or not.

The compost I got was from a nursery, it looked mostly broken down, looked really close to soil to me (looked "done"), but what I am able to identify here and there is wood - no way to know what kind of wood it was. So the wood is what is making me think that maybe it IS still hot, and trying to decompose, and if it IS, then it is pulling nitrogen.

I had mixed in some eggshells and ground-up kitchen waste (toward the bottom of the raised beds) and mixed decomposed cow manure through it.

I've got a compost pile going, it's slow, and I've got a worm bin (it's new, not much there to use yet). So I had considered taking half the soil out of each bed, mixing in more compost, some of our own clay soil (dry of course) and seeing where that took it.

I have to make some presumptions first as I do not know whether you have done a PH test on your soil. Lets presume you have and it is not too low. I think your problem maybe Potassium not Nitrogen. Clay soils are slow to warm hence the eggplant gets going eventually and this will probably be the case with your other crops too. The plants need the Potassium to get the Nitrogen. As you cannot redig your area and add to it now because of the crops growing you need a quick fix.As long as the PH is ok you could add wood ash. Not too much as it does acidify the soil. Adding cow manure was good but it is slow not a quick fix so it should show some results eventually. If you are not too squeamish and are not on HRT wee in a bucket add some water and use that. The Urea will speed things up. Bonemeal will help as will the fish emulsions you added. See if you can get hold of an organic grobag or two and spread that over your soil. Any combination of the above will improve your soil hopefully enough for this year.

For next year add bracken to your compost. Work some granite meal into the bed. I am presuming you dig roughly in Winter to break up clay? If not do so and add your compost in the Spring. If you have room grow Alfalfa as a green manure and dig that in. Hope all that makes sense and one more thing check this site;http://www.pda.org.uk/leaflets/18/no18-page1.htm

I'm not squeamish, I can wee in a bucket. And I'll definitely add the bonemeal!

Interesting that you thought potassium, while showing a friend my peas last evening and looking at them again, I thought of potassium but had yet to look that up - prolly remembered a picture from a book somewhere. I hadn't realized it could show up as an apparent nitrogen deficiency - so I will certainly look that up tonight too.

I had my hubby pick up a soil test kit this morning, something I also only thought of last night (duuuuh), I know the home kits aren't perfect but, even a rough idea would be helpful, no?

The soil is mostly from the nursery, with only a little of our natural clay mixed in. Since clay really typically does have a good amount of nurtrients in it, it would likely behoove me to add some of that to the soil next time it's workable (it has been dry forever, we just started getting some rain, so I have to wait for the ground to dry some before I can take any up)

Thanks so VERY much for your help. Eventually I'll get everything figured out, right?

The fact that it has rained should make everything look much healthier. Handwatering never does have quite the same effect as rain. Should help with N deficiency too as Hydrogen has to be handed over by the plant to the soil to get any nutrient back. Plenty of that in water. Are you on raised beds then? Would be a good idea to mix clay with compost as it is the most nutritious out there just doesn't want to share.Have you got the soil tester that you add water to rather than a probe? Gives much better indication of PH levels. Try to get to your true soil and test that too. If you want a cheap method use bicarbonate of soda. The more it bubbles the more acidic your soil is.I am sure you will get to know your soil pretty quickly. Plants always give telltale clues as to what they need. The more you watch the more you learn.I do of course expect an organic box of veg on my doorstep in the near future!